Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee!

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the con­ti­nent, a part of the main…. any man’s death dimin­ish­es me, because I am involved in mankind, and there­fore nev­er send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.” (John Donne)

Once more the Lev­ant, once a beau­ti­ful sanc­tu­ary of peace, with rolling hills and sway­ing olive trees, is the site of a bit­ter con­flict between the region­al pow­er, Israel, and a recal­ci­trant Hamas, a Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tant group that con­trols the tiny Gaza strip in west of Israel. The con­flict has seen the deaths of 528 peo­ple and the wound­ing of anoth­er 3,130 to date – and this, by only con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mates. The dead include 508 Pales­tini­ans, 18 Israeli mil­i­tary per­son­nel and two Israeli cit­i­zens.

The dead were clubbed togeth­er under a more uni­ver­sal label of “peo­ple” to under­score a very sim­ple point, which seems to have evad­ed its own inte­gra­tion into much of the pub­lic (and, indeed, media) dis­course sur­round­ing the fresh­ly re-ignit­ed con­flict: that the site of con­flict is a site of pro­found human tragedy, and endur­ing human suf­fer­ing; that it is a site which rings with human loss and loss of humans; that it is a site where humans oppress human­i­ty, and where human­i­ty meets vil­lainy, injus­tice and the worst sort of tyran­ny humans can per­pe­trate against each oth­er; and that, final­ly, it is a site where the great­est test of humans such as you and us, shall be tak­en, and one of the great­est bat­tles of human resilience and endurance, and for human free­dom and lib­er­ty, and, indeed, even­tu­al­ly, redemp­tion will be fought.

Here is a con­flict before us, which is a con­flict of the abstract: it is var­i­ous­ly cast as a bat­tle between the “good” and the “evil”, between “right” and “wrong”, between “forces of light, of free­dom and lib­er­ty, of progress” against “forces of dark­ness, of oppres­sion and tyran­ny, and of con­ser­v­a­tive retreat”, between one his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive and anoth­er, and one set of his­tor­i­cal “truths” against anoth­er, and between tales of woe,
sub­ju­ga­tion, indeed exter­mi­na­tion, dis­pos­ses­sion and state­less­ness of one peo­ple against those of anoth­er. Both sides lay claim to “good­ness”, and “right­ness”, and vic­tim-hood, and inveigh against the oth­er as being the “evil”, and “wrong”, and the oppres­sor. Which side to invest one’s belief and faith in is deter­mined often by the acci­dent of birth – what part of globe one was born in, or what reli­gion one pro­fess­es, and so on. The only real judge­ment on the virtue or false­hood of either side is the one that his­to­ry pass­es, and his­to­ry takes its time in sit­ting in its judge­ment. We must remem­ber too, that all tales of hunt have for­ev­er glo­ri­fied the hunters, because the hunt­ed are the stuff of bone-dust which is blown away by the winds of Time: and there­fore, whom his­to­ry exon­er­ates, and whom it indicts and con­demns, we can­not, at present, cor­rect­ly judge, and so, to con­tin­ue to waste one’s breath in debat­ing which side is right and which is wrong is futile, and, indeed, serves to belit­tle the real issue at hand, which is one of human suf­fer­ing and tragedy, shared by both the Israeli peo­ple and the Pales­tin­ian.

It might be well to point out towards the state of apartheid that Israel has erect­ed as an eulo­giz­ing edi­fice to supreme tyran­ny, in the lands that one would call “Pales­tine”. It is true that Pales­tini­ans are locked in a tiny, block­ad­ed, even walled-in, open-air prison; that they are made to bear dif­fer­ent num­ber plates on their cars and ply sep­a­rate roads; that they are not allowed to ride in the same bus­es as Israeli cit­i­zens; and so on. It is also true that Pales­tini­ans have been dis­pos­sessed of their lands, cast into a void of state­less­ness, refused prop­er legal recourse and fun­da­men­tal human rights, and even have access to basic health­care or san­i­ta­tion, et al, cur­tailed on account of a sev­en-year-long, sti­fling block­ade imposed by Israel. How­ev­er, if one is to speak with an Israeli cit­i­zen one would real­ize the state of para­noia and fear he or she lives in. Israeli cit­i­zens have been ter­ror­ized through gun-and-bomb attacks,
kid­nap­pings, and, often, unend­ing bar­rages of rock­et fire com­ing from Gaza in Israel’s south-west, or from Lebanon in its north. One would well point towards the Iron Dome anti-mis­sile air-defence sys­tem, but then it was devel­oped in response to the relent­less rock­et fire, and has been installed only recent­ly. The rock­et fire pred­i­cates it by decades. Israel has been attacked sev­er­al times in the past by a string of Arab states act­ing in uni­son, often as part of tem­porar­i­ly assem­bled coali­tions ori­ent­ed towards putting out the very flame of the idea of Israel. Israeli cit­i­zens are Jews who have suf­fered death, destruc­tion and mis­ery through the cen­turies, often at hands of Chris­tians extrem­ists in their count­less pogroms, and at the hands of nation­al social­ists in the shape of Hitler-led Nazi regime in Ger­many (Jews are said to have adopt­ed a pol­i­cy of qui­et acqui­es­cence and accep­tance in the face of such tyran­ny being wrought against them. They are, thus, now, believed to be attempt­ing to vio­lent­ly assert them­selves as a strong peo­ple, capa­ble of defend­ing them­selves, and final­ly, unwill­ing to suf­fer any longer. That is, in any case, one way of look­ing at this). Jews have remained the orig­i­nal tillers of the land that is today Israel and Pales­tine, and have either been dri­ven out, or have had them­selves to migrate first to Europe, and then, after Nazi oppres­sion, to mod­ern-day Israel, often to escape local ver­sions of pogroms, in the case of Mid­dle East, being run by local Mus­lims, who are today Jews’ vic­tims, in a stark rever­sal of for­tune. One can, of course, debate these things but to what end?

The real con­flict is far more com­pli­cat­ed than a sim­ple ques­tion of own­er­ship, pos­ses­sion, and dis­pos­ses­sion. Hamas, for instance, is an Iran-backed mil­i­tant orga­ni­za­tion which is, often, delib­er­ate­ly vio­lent. Indeed, Israel is no bet­ter. The scale of vio­lence that it per­pe­trates against Hamas is dis­pro­por­tion­ate (use of relent­less air strikes, some 74,000 ground troops, backed with armour and artillery, to com­bat a few thou­sand untrained, poor­ly-armed shoul­der-fired-rock­et-launch­ers tout­ing Hamas mili­ti­a­men). How­ev­er, the pro­por­tion of vio­lence being per­pe­trat­ed by either side against the oth­er is not the real ques­tion here: use of vio­lence to respond vio­lence, indeed vio­lence itself, is. All use of vio­lence by all sides is wrong, and wor­thy of con­dem­na­tion. Any­how, Hamas is dis­liked by Egypt, Sau­di Ara­bia, U.A.E and oth­er Sun­ni Arab play­ers in the region. Indeed, when Egypt was asked recent­ly to help bro­ker a peace agree­ment, it com­plete­ly cir­cum­vent­ed the Hamas lead­er­ship, and announced its pro­pos­als to the media, which is where Hamas lead­er­ship says it found out about such pro­pos­als. Nat­u­ral­ly, Hamas reject­ed the offer. Recent­ly, polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors from across the globe have begun to com­ment upon a pos­si­ble Sau­di hand in the con­flict. Sau­di Ara­bia is decid­ed­ly against Hamas, wants to side­line and even­tu­al­ly dis­man­tle it, and then move into Gaza itself, using its petrodol­lars to forge local influ­ence.

Israel, for its part, is being led by a scare-mon­ger­ing, con­ser­v­a­tive, and high­ly bel­liger­ent prime min­is­ter, Ben­jamin Netanyahu. It had ear­li­er refused to rec­og­nize a pop­u­lar­ly elect­ed Hamas polit­i­cal lead­er­ship, lat­er refused to talk to Hamas, and has since been con­sis­tent­ly sab­o­tag­ing all efforts at for­ma­tion of a uni­ty gov­ern­ment (between Hamas and Fatah). This is nat­u­ral­ly ori­ent­ed towards fore­stalling the cre­ation, and so, an inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion of a Pales­tin­ian state. It wants to push ahead with its ille­gal set­tle­ments in the West Bank, so that any ques­tion on which side gets what parts of the West Bank in a future res­o­lu­tion of the decades-old con­flict, can deliv­er pre-decid­ed results, so that a greater Israel can be achieved. At the same time, Israel would be unwill­ing to relin­quish con­trol of essen­tial­ly Pales­tin­ian water resources which are, at present, being divert­ed towards Israel. There has also been some talk of Gaza being a repos­i­to­ry of vast gas reserves, which Israel could exploit.

All this goes well beyond the abstracts that the con­flict is hostage to. It is time, per­haps, to final­ly bat­ter through the abstracts which have defined this con­flict for decades, and take into account, and then, address the real issues, caus­es, moti­va­tions, beliefs, val­ues, and very impor­tant­ly, the many com­pet­ing region­al and inter­na­tion­al inter­ests which togeth­er make this con­flict the issue that it is. Since Israel is the larg­er, far more pow­er­ful bel­liger­ent of the two, and is the par­ty that inflict­ed the greater amount of harm on the oth­er – strict­ly in terms of pro­por­tion – per­haps the onus of respon­si­bil­i­ty of begin­ning a process of de-esca­la­tion, and to begin to move towards nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment, falls on its shoul­ders. How­ev­er, this is not to sug­gest in any way that Hamas does not have any respon­si­bil­i­ty. It does too. Its rock­et attacks must end, and its belief in the employ­ment of vio­lence to fur­ther the cause of Pales­tine that it pro­fess­es to cham­pi­on (over 70% of the 508 dead Pales­tini­ans have been civil­ians accord­ing to U.N. esti­mates, deaths which Hamas’s actions have helped cause). One would sug­gest com­plete demil­i­ta­riza­tion of the Pales­tin­ian lands, insti­tu­tion of a UN man­date to admin­is­ter Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ry, hold­ing of free, fair, open and trans­par­ent tri­al of any and all involved in per­pe­trat­ing vio­lence on both sides by the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice, and final­ly, hold­ing of free, fair and trans­par­ent gen­er­al elec­tions in the Pales­tin­ian lands to deter­mine the local population’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship, which can then sit on the table with Israel.

At the end, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that t is for the lib­er­a­tion and redemp­tion of human­i­ty that one must strug­gle, because strife afflicts wounds, both men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly, and kills peo­ple on both sides, and that it is human­i­ty itself which suf­fers, and weeps, through the dark nights of such loss, cru­el­ty and tyran­ny.